Lot 697 D

The art historian Gunter Schweikhart on Sigmar Polke's oeuvre:

“The elements that create a distance from everyday imagery in Polke's paintings are formal quality and density of content. Yet again and again we believe that the countless figures, objects and locations are things we have seen before, in real life. After all, they are so replete with reality. Unmistakably, however, their fictitiousness is equally much in evidence, translating into imagery things that have haunted us as either chimeras or wishful thinking. Reality does work out within the picture, yet not without revealing rather embarrassingly the extent to which trivialities have become central. [...] Polke's drawings and paintings are about the way we deal with imagery and, going further, with reality, with people and with actual objects. Many of his paintings are therefore designed to destroy or change our viewing habits, to make us perceive the way we handle imagery - something that has long been out of control - and to mobilise our forces against an endless abundance of trivialities.

This is what creates Polke's intensity - his broad bandwidth of shapes and themes, an ongoing attempt to charge life and perception with maximum intensity. As we become engaged in Polke's art, our perspectives and our perception change, and indeed not just in what is conveyed through the imagery. Hardly any other contemporary who is concerned about this world has taken the identity of life and art as far as he did.” (Gunter Schweikhart, Zeichnungen von Sigmar Polke, in: Kunstmuseum Bonn (ed.), Sigmar Polke, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Skizzenbücher 1962-1988, exhib.cat., Kunstmuseum Bonn, Cologne 1988, pp.206/207)